Life, death, alcoholism, gambling, fishing, dancing, depravity, bravery, boredom, family... These constitute the poetic and picturesque life of "Love in the River". My father is a pastor. He preaches and solves doubts, and tells about the voice from God. Between the swaying grass and the splashing of the stream, God's gaze brings all vitality and agility. The mother is kind by nature and serves God and the family devoutly. Even before her son fights to persuade him to be pushed down, she just repeats that I slipped by myself. When the son picked him up at the Noma Festival, the warm and touching smile that covered his mouth was such a heavy maternal love. The eldest son, Norman, received his father's literary education since childhood. He was restrained and sincere in nature. He fell in love with a girl in the country and became a teacher at the University of Chicago. The youngest son Paul is outspoken and wild, frank and natural. He fell in love with Indian girls and dared to break the taboos and dance. He was addicted to gambling, and finally put his life on the line.
These people, these lives, are the rhythms of our lives that repeat day and night. Our days are the same, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar. Just like the big river in the movie, either gurgling or trickling, it remains without a trace.
"Love in the Big River" moved us not only by letting us see ourselves. What the "big river" evokes is the poetic chapter of "fishing": the father taught the children to fish since childhood, throwing the line, pulling the line, obeying certain rules, according to a certain rhythm, "swoosh" emits a pleasant melody, fishing has become a kind of The art of nurturing temperament. Norman strictly complied with his father's requirements, while his youngest son Paul created his own spinner hair. The hook gently swept across the water and hooked into the water. This is an accidental meeting of life, fate and chance, ephemeral and eternity, are decided at this moment. Without sticking to stereotypes, without deliberate planning, fishing is the perfect interpretation of a life posture. This detail determines Paul's uniqueness, he lives in his own life. Not of authority, nor of coercive destiny. In the last father-son fishing in the film, Paul fully revealed his wildness. It was an elegant big fish, ignoring the bait, and following the turbulent stream forever, fighting with the fishing line; A perfect Paul, not overwhelmed by difficulties in the slightest, clinging to the rod and going down the river until he had the fish in his hand. As Norman laments, this is an extreme. At that moment, life is pure perfect art. This makes me want to go to the journey of Santiago and the Marlins in "The Old Man and the Sea". The grace of life is not weakened by the failure of either side. At that moment, life makes the freest choice, and we build it for ourselves. beings of meaning.
Freedom is the exploration of existence in "Love in the River". Existentialists believe that existence is obscured by essence, and the truth of life is obscured. Existence requires constant clarification, and this possibility stems from the freedom of life to choose. A life based on free choice is a free life, an authentic life. The family of "Love in the River" is a true family of freedom. The family is full of democracy and freedom, and everyone is responsible for their own behavior. Even in disobedience to God's admonition to "waste food," little Paul did not yield to God's authority, he didn't eat or he didn't, and sat at the table until the sun shone through the curtains the next day. The son's choice of future and destiny, the father and mother do not have any requirements and instructions, they are full of gratitude and sincerity, and sincerely look forward to the son's answer. They are full of affirmation of any choice their son makes. Norman chose to study far away, fell in love with a country girl, and accepted to go out to teach, all of which were made by himself. Paul and his brother drifted on the rapids, fell in love with Indian women, danced and played freely like a gypsy girl, gambled on his own wages, chose his own way of fishing, and chose a career as a journalist, all of which originated from him. the energy of life itself. Therefore, they live in free and easy lives, especially Paul, who gambled and lost his life because of it, but I don't hate him because of this, but I think he is cute, simple, and authentic.
This is a free and dynamic family. Like a beautiful and light poem, even if death comes, it is like a bright picture scroll like a setting sun and dusk. "The people closest to us are often the least we know, but we can still love them, and we can love people we don't know so much," said my father.
We can love someone we know so well, even though we don't know him. This is a religious admonition and an enigmatic fact of existence. Jesus said, we are to love one another, and if someone hits you on the left cheek, hand over the right cheek and let him hit you. Love is the only choice to bid farewell to the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel makes human beings unfamiliar, misunderstood, and conflicted with each other. Even the closest people, in the depths of a person, how much can we understand? The most familiar is often the most unfamiliar. Sometimes it feels like you can hardly distinguish the people or things you get along with day and night, and even temporarily forget the memory. In this case, not only the language is the Tower of Babel, but the eyes and the body are the same and unfamiliar to him. Love is the only language that destroys the Tower of Babel. Love is not a coercion, not an oppression. Love is a sincere blessing. Like father and brother in the movies. Christian love bids farewell to the ruthlessness of Judaism, the exclusivity and loneliness of Judaism. My father was a pastor who knew deeply the truth of Jesus Christ. Lovers, love things, everything seems to come from the left and right hands. A mother loves her son, and brothers love each other. This is a family full of freedom and love, a place where existence is clarified, and a home where life is uncovered.
Instead, another family appears in the film, the home of Jessie, whom Norman loves. Jessie is warm and wild, but has a big talkative older brother. Because of the return of my brother, the life of the whole family is displayed. Her father, mother, and brother were so mediocre that they almost loathed us. His face was full of anticipation for his return, his mouth was full of acceptance, and his face was almost a forced smile. In such a living room, everything is almost tense and disguised. Everyone cares deeply and is afraid of saying something wrong, and also deeply afraid of hurting other people unintentionally. They are careful and lose the original warmth of the family. It's tiresome, but it's so real, a situation that almost everyone sees. Love is so careful, but in exchange for mischief, with a woman who was once the queen of the competition, she has no intention of fishing, but enjoys the pleasure of the flesh on the grass in the mountains, in exchange for a scorching wound, and almost destroys her sister's love. . The family is not lacking in love, but lacking in the nature of love. All people are tightly bound by love and lose their freedom of choice. And there are thousands of families like this! I think of Wolff in "All the time". He was suffering from mental pain, and was even more unbearable because of his husband's love, and finally walked towards the center of the swift stream, towards the river where life flows. I also think of the most modern woman, the AIDS-afflicted man she cared for, didn't she endure the bondage of the bondage of love just as hard, and finally jumped out of the window and died? Unfree love will inevitably lead to the shadow of death, either to the end of life, or to live a hell-like life of suffering.
"All the time" is also the theme of a river, however, it is a huge vicious python that devours life and goes to death, with a tragic and solemn look at death. The river in "Love in the Big River" is beautiful and a place for poetic dwelling. Brother Jessie's sensual indulgence, the director put him in the grassy grass, not the riverside rocky beach. Fishing is the life of the river, an artistic way of life. The mentality of fishing is free, unrestrained, brave to fight, showing dignity as life. The artistic charm of Santiago is noble in this sense, radiating among the world. Paul's death, a balance between being a fishing genius and a gambler, was essentially the same, a life of freedom, and, therefore, moving and not mournful.
Die as it happens, die like the cycle of nature. "Love in the Big River" was thus sublimated. When Norman recalled the past, the photos of Zhang Huanhuang were full of tension, and the dead lives were like the water splashing on the river, like the rhythm of the waving of the fishing line. , still beautiful and beautiful. People, ever poetic habitation, Robert Redford provides us with the most simple and most tortuous water road - just like the one that Paul's friends thought impossible and dared not try Drift road.
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